president of the united states lived here for a week and have and what happened at that time as gerald ford, who served as vice president became president when next-gen resigned. it happened very quickly at the time for the families living in alexandria they had been living there for 20 years. .. >> when world war ii hit, a lot of men had to go serve in the war, and some officers went and served in the war, so pretty soon there was a need for women to start working in the department. and that's really when they hired their first secretary. the first women were civilians who were indoors. in the early 1950s, they wanted to free up police officers for more important things than school crossings, and so the department hired women to serve as crossing guards. with this group of women, there were three who were african-american, and not only was it the first time women were in uniform representing the agencies, it was the first time people of color were in uniform representing the alexandria police department. and the alexandria million polie department was one of the earliest agencies to use k-